"Spider" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stream a little, which has here expanded into a broad surface, and view its "goings on." There is a water-spider taking most alarming leaps, as if afraid of wetting his feet; a dragon-fly is darting hither and yon, his long, slender body flashing with green, golden and purple hues; a large dace has just apparently flattened his nose against the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... such strangers in the land, and probably over 200 millions capital invested. Shall they be treated in a manner to justify the accusation that they were inveigled into our land with the object of despoiling them afterwards after the style of 'Come into my parlour, says the spider to the fly'? These people count upon our honest friendship, especially the many English among them who ground that confidence upon the honourable peace accorded us in 1881. Shall we deceive them? May we hate them for old ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... spider. As he was journeying along he came upon a man—in our legends these men do anything; they take a whole community of men right down—and he met him face to face. The man-eater stood in the path, the spider in front of him. The big man kept ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... yer walk into my parlour?' said the spider to the fly. I knows that game, and I guess the climate o' ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... the sound of church-bells awoke in Twardowsky's recollection a hymn to the Virgin, which he forthwith sang, and the devil could hold him no longer. Twardowsky, however, could not get down again, but remains suspended in the air, only receiving news from the earth by means of a spider which happened to be on the tail of his coat, and which occasionally spins a thread and goes down, for a while, returning with whatever it may have picked up for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... forbear; and he took note of that, as he closed the book, as a thing to look at again, if he should at any time find himself tempted to be cruel. Again, he would never quite forget the appeal in the small sister's face, in the garden under the lilacs, terrified at a spider lighted on her sleeve. He could trace back to the look then noted a certain mercy he conceived always for people in fear, even of little things, which seemed to make him, though but for a moment, capable of almost any sacrifice of himself. Impressible, susceptible persons, indeed, who had had their ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... destructive of eggs and bantlings as was supposed, but also that he destroys many noxious insects, and is, therefore, a bird of real economic value. The great bulk of his insect diet consists of beetles, grasshoppers, and caterpillars, with a few bugs, wasps, and flies, and an occasional spider and myriapod. The average of insect food for the whole year was 23 per cent, varying from less than 1 per cent in January to over 66 per cent in August, and it is gratifying to know that predaceous beetles and tent caterpillars form a large part of ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... Douglas—chemistry," the janitor shouted once more, and the candidates moved in front of the respective tables. Tom found himself facing a great spider crab, which appeared to be regarding him with a most malignant expression upon its crustacean features. Behind the crab sat a little professor, whose projecting eyes and crooked arms gave him such a resemblance to the creature in front that the ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... quarter of a mile away, Hans Mueller was still in sight, skirting the base of a sharp incline. Through the trembling heat waves he seemed a mere moving dark spot; like an ant or a spider on its zigzag journey. The grass at the base of the rise was rank and heavy, reaching almost to the waist of the moving figure. Rowland watched it all absently, meditatively; as he would have watched the ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... the water from the Fountain of Beauty, which was in the flask on a shelf in the Princess's room, where she had placed it that she might see it often. Now it happened that one of the Princess's ladies in chasing a spider had knocked the flask off the shelf and broken it, and every drop of the water had been spilt. Not knowing what to do, she had hastily swept away the pieces of crystal, and then remembered that in the King's room she had seen a flask of exactly the same ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... the lad should not be lost for want of the entree to something like a home, because the upper crust of Mycening considered him as "only Dr. Kingston's partner," and the Kingstons themselves had the sort of sense that he was too much for them which makes a spider dislike to have a ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... benediction), past Rothesay Bay, with the misty Kyles beyond. The Garroch Head, with a cluster of Clyde Trust Hoppers, glides abaft the beam, and the blue Cock o' Arran shows up across the opening water. All is haste and bustle. Aloft, spider-like figures, black against the tracery of the rigging, cast down sheets and clew lines in the one place where they must go. Shouts and hails—"Fore cross-trees, there! Royal buntline inside th' crin'line, ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... row of houses. The plantation was high land. The houses were little log houses with one room. They had fire arches. They would hang pots over the fire. They would have spiders that you call ovens. You would put coals on top of the spider and you would put them under it and you could smell that stuff cooking! The door was in the top of the spider and the coals would be on top ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... were as true as steel to him. And with that one hundred and ninety he surprised and defeated by night Narvaez's splendid little army. And what is more, after beating them, made such friends with them, that he engaged them all next morning to march with him wherever he wanted. The man was like a spider—whoever fell into his net, friend or foe, never came out again till ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... sting a spider? It doesn't kill the spider, it simply stuns it. That way, the spider remains alive and fresh so that young wasps can feed upon it ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... conscious of every sound and if you sleep in a field you hear thousands of them—all the rustlings of the little shy nocturnal animals, tiny squeakings and shrillings in the grass, as well as the cries of the birds of prey. Now and then, too, a spider ran over his face and made him jump, and very early the strong light poured into the mouth of the tent and made it seem absurd to ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... curst fount 495 Of all the violence, rapine, cruelty, Tyrannie, & atheisme flowing through the realme: That y'ave a tongue so scandalous, 'twill cut The purest christall, and a breath that will Kill to that wall a spider; you will jest 500 With God, and your soule to the Devill tender For lust; kisse horror, and with death engender: That your foule body is a Lernean fenne Of all the maladies breeding in all men: That you are ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... Augusta was a girl of twelve years old, she saw Mlle. Panache crush a spider to death without emotion: the lesson on humanity was not lost upon her. From imitation, she learned her governess's foolish terror of insects; and from example, she was also taught that species of cruelty, by which at ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... fondness of spiders for soothing musical tones. The insects usually approach by letting themselves down from the ceiling of the apartment, and remain suspended above the instrument.[176:2] Professor C. Reclain, during a concert at Leipsic, witnessed the descent of a spider from a chandelier during a violin solo. But as soon as the orchestra began to play, the insect retreated. Mr. C. V. Boys, who has made some interesting experiments with a view to determining the susceptibility of spiders to the sound of a tuning-fork, reports, in "Body and Mind," that by means ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... on the stairs in informal groups, leaving the centre of the floor clear. Even Menzel and Begas were there. A special exhibition was to open soon, and the walls were hung with a collection of Boecklin pictures. The name of the dance was 'Mara, or the Spider's Victim.' ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... was marked simultaneously as game by two hunters. One was "Bully" McGuire, whose system of sport required the use of a strong arm and the misuse of an eight-inch piece of lead pipe. The other Nimrod of the asphalt was "Spider" Kelley, a sportsman ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... Further, it sometimes happens that a fly or a spider, or some other poisonous creature falls into the chalice after the consecration. Or even that the priest comes to know that poison has been put in by some evilly disposed person in order to kill him. Now in this instance, if he takes it, he appears to sin by killing himself, or by tempting ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... they hang from branches in true monkey fashion; they lead an arboreal omnivorous existence; they feed off fruits, birds' eggs, insects, and roots; and altogether they are just active, cunning, intelligent, tree-haunting marsupial spider-monkeys. ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... for he had not seen anybody nor heard any of the songs he had loved for so long. Pine Tree heard the whistle come nearer and nearer, and at last the man stepped through the doorway. He looked about him and saw the spider webs hanging in the corners and the birds flying in and out of the windows, and he wondered how long it had been since people had lived there. He looked up and saw the ridge-pole, which had once been Pine Tree. "Oh!" he said, "I have found what I have long been looking for." ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... to another, and entered spacious and faded chambers, some rudely shuttered, some receiving their full charge of daylight, all empty and unhomely. It was a rich house, on which Time had breathed his tarnish and dust had scattered disillusion. The spider swung there; the bloated tarantula scampered on the cornices; ants had their crowded highways on the floor of halls of audience; the big and foul fly, that lives on carrion and is often the messenger of death, had set up his nest in the rotten woodwork, and buzzed heavily about the rooms. ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for women, poor fellow! You will have us be spider or fly, and if a man can't spin a web all he can hope is not to be caught in one. She knows his history, too, and that won't be in his favour. How did she look when ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Puzzuoli. We stopped at the lake Agnano which is strongly impregnated with sulfur. On the banks of this lake are the Thermae or vapour baths, and here is also the famous Grotto del Cane, the pestilential vapour arising from which rises about three inches from the ground and has the appearance of a spider's web. An unfortunate dog performs the miracle of the resurrection to all those who visit this natural curiosity; and we also were curious to see its effect. The guardian of the Thermes seized the poor animal ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... out, year after year, is like the current of the blood tending back to the heart, like the response of the nerves to the pulse-beat, reporting at the brain, bringing news of the body's health, even down to the fingers' ends. And we sit here, like a spider in a web, ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... timid, surrounded with a crowd of spies and base informers, shrinking from the sight of men in the recesses of his palace, and controlling the complicated affairs of his Duchy by means of correspondents and intelligencers, this last scion of the Milanese despots lived like a spider in an inscrutable network of suspicion and intrigue. His policy was one of endless plot and counterplot. He trusted no man; his servants were paid to act as spies on one another; his bodyguard consisted ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... their rough, gold-striped pear-tree wood. A head of a Merovingian style, resting against a bowl, a bearded man, at once resembling a Buddhist priest and an orator at a public reunion, touching the ball of a gigantic cannon with his fingers; a frightful spider revealing a human face in its body. The charcoal drawings went even farther into dream terrors. Here, an enormous die in which a sad eye winked; there, dry and arid landscapes, dusty plains, shifting ground, volcanic upheavals catching rebellious clouds, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... barring a flaw, and I congratulate you on its recovery, but I see no human eye in it. I see some indistinct lines, fine as the thread of a spider's web, that is all. There is the breakfast bell, duke. We will go into the drawing room and find Cora. She must be ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... I was going to tell you, two bigger boys, another Robert and John Brownlow-about eleven and nine years old. The younger one is a sort of black spider monkey, wanting the tail. We shall have some trouble with that ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... employment. Yet it is to be observed, that the work thus executed was inferior in quality; not marketable at home, and merely hurried over with a view to exportation. It was called, in the cant of the trade, by the name of "Spider-work." The rejected workmen, in the blindness of their ignorance, instead of rejoicing at these improvements in arts so beneficial to mankind, conceived themselves to be sacrificed to improvements in mechanism. In the foolishness of their hearts they imagined that ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... as it had diversely been declared by all that had gone before him, (for the shunning of those rocks, which either of those ways must unavoidably cast him upon,) he was forced to seek out an untrodden path, and to frame out of his own brain a new way, (like a spider's web wrought out of her own bowels,) hoping by that device to salve all absurdities, that could be objected; to wit, by making the glory of God (as it is indeed the chiefest, so) the only end of all ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... Captain Laffan, who was in advance of me, cry out to his bearers, "You don't mean to say that we are to go over that spider's-web affair! Why! it looks as if it would give way with the weight of that woman ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... as she turned the brown-spotted leaves, there fell out a packet, a letter superscribed, "Miss Anna Clare; to be read on her twenty-first birthday, and when quite alone." Katie gasped, "Oh, look!" and dropped the paper as if it burned her fingers. Aubrey sprang forward, prepared to slay a giant spider, but when his eyes fell upon the writing which had so startled his sister, he too seemed petrified. They gazed fixedly into each other's eyes for a minute, then ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... furniture, every bit of which is catalogued, is as familiar as our own studies. We know the exact geography even of the larder and the cistern. We catch the odour of the damp, close office, where Madame Vauquer lurks like a human spider. She is the animating genius of the place, and we know the exact outline of her figure, and every article of her dress. The minuteness of her portrait brings out the horrors of the terrible process by which poor Goriot gradually sinks from one step to another ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... are more distinguished by range and extent than by originality. If we require the originality which consists in weaving, like a spider, their web from their own bowels; in finding clay and making bricks and building the house; no great men are original. Nor does valuable originality consist in unlikeness to other men. The hero is in the press of knights and the thick ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... lies all over you without any weight and makes you feel happy and crinkly like bubbling water. There's no sun on the empty house— sly-looking house— you can't see in its windows that watch you out of their corners. Perhaps there's a big spider there spinning gray threads over the windows till they look like dead people's faces.... Jimmie says: Jimmie's hair is white as a white mouse. His lashes are gold as mama's wedding ring and his mouth ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... thought that he had lost his chance; he had set himself to frighten and quell La Cibot till she was completely in his power, bound hand and foot. She had walked into his study as a fly walks into a spider's web; there she was doomed to remain, entangled in the toils of the little lawyer who meant to feed upon her. Out of this bit of business, indeed, Fraisier meant to gain the living of old days; comfort, competence, and consideration. He and his friend Dr. Poulain ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... in a web might as well attempt to escape from a hungry spider. They caught me in a moment; and, without further ceremony, stretching out my arms and legs, lashed them to the topmast-rigging, making what is called a spread eagle of me. It was very humiliating, though my position was thus exalted, and very unromantic; and ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... may turn an envious eye. He cannot but acquaint himself with the whole horrid list of chicanery, since its items are rungs of the ladder on which he himself may hereafter seek to mount. If he aims to be a great Wall Street spider he must perforce fully acquaint himself with what material will go toward the spinning of that baleful tissue, his proprietary web. It must be woven, this web, out of perjuries and robberies. Its fibres ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... walking the highway, "seeking whom they may devour," and gratifying at once their malice and their avarice, by plundering their fellow-citizens, and filling their own pockets. In some towns they have been stationed at every turn of the road, ready to dart out upon the traveller, like a spider from the corner of his web. We rejoice at every occurrence which checks this persecuting spirit.—Those who know us, know that we respect the Sabbath and its holy institutions: for this very reason we reprobate ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... I was her sergeant, the star part of the piece. But the show was a frost, though Lillah gave an excellent imitation, with the aid of a toy spider, of a Hun inserting bacilli into the nation's aqua pura. Yes, I'm afraid I was the failure. I couldn't get to grips with my part, and the whole thing was so obviously a charity performance, with Phyllis ordering herself sternly about to try and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... things that happen result from the one substance. This surely means that what happens now and what happened millions of years ago are, for the substance, equally present and necessary results. To illustrate once more in my own way: A spider creeping back and forth across a circle could, if she were geometrically disposed, measure out in temporal succession first this diameter, and then that. Crawling first over one diameter, she would say, 'I now find this so long.' Afterwards examining another diameter, she would say, ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... advancing, he seated himself near the Cardinal, who, having recognized him by the general movement he created, saluted him with a dry and silent inclination of the head, regarding him fixedly, as if awaiting some news and unable to avoid knitting his brows, as at the aspect of a spider ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... be made very clear to the girl who comes up to the city, and that is that the ordinary ice cream parlor is very likely to be a spider's web for her entanglement. This is perhaps especially true of those ice cream saloons and fruit stores kept by foreigners. Scores of cases are on record where young girls have taken their first step towards "white slavery" in places of this character. And it is hardly too much ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... and hurrying past as if she thought we might bite her. Indeed, I can only compare her deportment to that of a female of our own, who is so full of vanity as to fancy all eyes on her, and who gives herself airs about a dog or a spider, because she thinks they make her look so much the more interesting. Conversation was quite out of the question; for the duenna hurried on, bending her head downwards, as if heartily ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Beard's chamber in order to light the alabaster lamp, which throws a soft and veiled light on the surrounding objects. This room is splendidly furnished in Indian stuff with white ground embroidered with flowers; a mosquito net of muslin, fine as a spider's web, envelopes an immense bed of gilded wood with a headboard of plate-glass, which appears thus in ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... for she held her uncle in secret dread. As she glided through the door her last look revealed them seated at the little table; he—ugly: black, and venomous; she—beautiful, and glittering in gay colors. It was like a summer fly basking unconsciously within the pounce of a brown and bloated spider. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... watching the ants carry away the sugar she sprinkled for them. Sometimes she caught flies for an old spider that had his den under the porch steps. "He is an ogah" (ogre), she explained to Fritz. "He's bewitched me so's I have to kill whole families of flies for ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... what could she do but murmur an invitation. As they reached the old stone house and Sibyl greeted them with a bright smile, poor Aunt Faith felt very much like the spider in the old song of the ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... the place of one card. The place of the other is filled by what are called "flats," or narrow bars of iron covered with card clothing. The cylinders move rapidly, the flats slowly, and the cotton passes between them. It comes out in a dainty white film not so very much heavier than a spider's web, and so beautifully white and shining that it does not seem as if the big, oily, noisy machines could ever have produced it. In a moment, however, it is gone somewhere into the depths of the machine. We have seen the last of the fleecy sheet, for the machinery ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... of a long room, near a rounded window, the lower sash, of which she raised to its full height. Outside the row of geranium beds glowed scarlet and crimson in the calm light. Beyond them the turf of the lawn was overspread by trailing gossamers, and delicate cart-wheel spider's webs upon which the dew still glittered. In the shrubberies robins sang; and above the river great companies of swallows swept to and fro, with sharp twitterings, restlessly gathering for their final ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... reciting a funeral service, murmured the words of the soliloquy on suicide. How solemnly sounded in that solitude the fateful phrase "but that the dread of something after death!" That was indeed the rub! After death there can be anything; and were it little and slender as a spider's web, it might be too much for the sleep that is supposed to know no waking and no dreams. After all, he thought, how much are men alike; for the quandary of Hamlet is mine; I know not what to do. He laid aside the book and gave ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... Brahmin, accompanied by troops of players and musicians, come out to meet him, and conduct him with all the honors to his stable-palace. A great number of cords and ropes of all qualities and lengths are attached to the raft, those in the centre being of fine silk (figuratively, "spun from a spider's web"). These are for the king and his noble retinue, who with their own hands make them fast to their gilded barges; the rest are secured to the great fleet of lesser boats. And so, with shouts of joy, beating of drums, blare of trumpets, boom of cannon, a hallelujah of music, and various ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... hand, Colt in holster, I arrived at his residence. There he was, sitting at the door of his corner house, whence he could look down three streets at once. How like a spider, I thought. ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... a couch covered with chintz, and half a dozen straight-backed, spider-legged chairs were ranged methodically along the sides of the room, while in the centre of the floor, so placed that the fresh morning breeze which entered by the door would blow straight across it to the window shaded by lilac bushes, was a table ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
... ears and shut thine eyes? And wilt thou NOT regard? Take warning, and stop thy journey before it be too late. Wilt thou he like the silly fly, that is not quiet unless she be either entangled in the spider's web or burnt in the candle? O sinner, sinner, there are better things than HELL to be had! There is heaven, there is God, there is Christ, there is communion with an innumerable assembly of saints ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... cannot arrive at so much as to imitate the nest of the least of birds, its contexture, beauty, and convenience: not so much as the web of a poor spider. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... also. For many long years Venice possessed this masterpiece without knowing it. Relegated to an old and seldom frequented church it had disappeared under a slow coating of dust and behind a network of spider-webs. The subject could scarcely be made out. One day, Count Cicognora, a great connoisseur, noticing that these rusty figures had a certain air, and scenting the master under this livery of neglect and misery, wetted his finger and rubbed ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... fashion upon his head, his scowling brows, and his bombastic air, announced that he was upon the point of accomplishing some important deed which greatly interested him. Leonard Rousselet, walking by his side, moved his spider legs with equal activity, carefully holding up the skirts of his long coat as if they ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... found this passage through the wildest jungle in the solar system new and fascinating. He had seen flowers of every color in the spectrum, some as large as himself; giant shrubs with leaves so fine that they looked like spider webs; Venusian teakwood trees fifty to a hundred feet thick at the base with some twisted into strange spirals as their trunks, shaded by another larger tree, sought a clear avenue to the sun. There were bushes that grew thorns three inches ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... direction to obtain evidence of another scandal to vary the monotony. Mrs. Croix, being Queen of the Jacobins, was safe, so press and pamphlet indulged in wild generalities of debauchery and rapine. It must be confessed that Jefferson fared no better in the Federalist sheets. He was a huge and hideous spider, spinning in a web full of seduced citizens; he meditated a resort to arms, did he lose the election. As to his private vices, they saddled him with an entire harem, and ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... And the spider, to serve his ends, By a sudden thread, Arms and legs outspread, On the table's midst descends, Comes to find, ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... cave-top as a brow its eye, Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard, And now a flower drops with a bee inside, 10 And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch,— He looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross And recross till they weave a spider-web, (Meshes of fire, some great fish breaks at times) And talks, to his own self, howe'er he please, Touching that other, whom his dam called God. Because to talk about Him, vexes—ha, Could He but know! and time to vex is now, When talk is ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... "The spider's most attenuated thread Is cord, is cable, to our strongest hold On earthly bliss; it breaks with ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... built—the shrine of the soul! Oh look down upon my agony, and deliver not this young angel up to hell! Me Thou hast at least armed with strength to endure the dizzying throng of thoughts, passions, longings, yearnings—but him! Thou hast given him a frame fragile as the frailest web of the spider, and every great thought rends and frays it. O ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... spider threw its web so high It caught on a moon in a cloudy sky. The moon whirled round, And down to the ground Fell the web, and captured ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... hung upon the barbed wire of the fence, all ready to drop and be hurled down into the abyss of death by that light breath of wind. Then again it seemed to her that she was ripping to pieces, like that spider web that tangled itself about the grass and floated in glistening filaments through the air; that she was unwinding into such gossamer strands, into ever finer and finer filaments, until she had vanished away into infinity and lost all consciousness of herself. This feeling moved her strongly and ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... mess, indeed. Doubtless the sergeant would know a great deal more than would be good for Barney Custer. The young man looked toward the door through which he had just entered. His sole object in coming into the spider's parlor had been to make it possible for him to come out again in full view of all the guards and officers and military chauffeurs, that their suspicions might not be aroused when he put his contemplated coup ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... managed to stand erect. The bin was not only pitch-dark, but full of cobwebs and the latter brushed over his face whenever he moved. Then a spider crawled on his neck, greatly adding to ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield
... sculpture on a grand scale. She was small, but her neck, her shoulders, and her arms had the most exquisite contours. Her hands with their tapering fingers and rosy nails looked like jewels preciously cared for. Her feet, encased in silken stockings almost as thin as a spider's-web, were a marvel; not that they recalled the very fabulous foot which Cinderella thrust into the glass slipper; but the other, very real, very celebrated and very palpable foot, of which the fair owner (the lovely wife of a well-known banker) used to present the model either ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... clear, transparent water He could see the fishes swimming Far down in the depths below him; See the yellow perch, the Sahwa, Like a sunbeam in the water, See the Shawgashee, the craw-fish, Like a spider on the bottom, On the white and ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... the Victory were absorbed into the main, then her topsails went, and then her top-gallants. She was now no more than a dead fly's wing on a sheet of spider's web; and even this fragment diminished. Anne could hardly bear to see the end, and yet she resolved not to flinch. The admiral's flag sank behind the watery line, and in a minute the very truck of the last topmast stole ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... ah Nick! it is na fair, First showing us the tempting ware, Bright wines, and bonie lasses rare, To put us daft Syne weave, unseen, thy spider snare O hell's ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... of this pleasant grandfather, of the neighbourhood of Mount Pleasant, was a horny-skinned, two-legged, money-getting species of spider who spun webs to catch unwary flies and retired into holes until they were entrapped. The name of this old pagan's god was Compound Interest. He lived for it, married it, died of it. Meeting with a heavy loss in an honest little enterprise in ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... all past privations by a substantial meal in the kitchen. But Mrs. Kelland had gone to Avoncester to purchase thread, and only her daughter Susan had come up, the girl who was supposed to be a sort of spider, with no capacities beyond her web. Nor did Rachel think Lovedy capable of walking down to Mackarel Lane, nor well enough for the comfortless chairs and the third part of a bed. No, Mr. Grey's words that Rachel was accountable for the children's sufferings had gone to her heart. Pity was ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were low, being emptied one by one as the tiny ship sped through the bright morning sky, and Tom was growing uneasy, until suddenly, far to the west and slightly to the north he spotted the plant, nestling in the mountain foothills. It lay far below, sprawling like some sort of giant spider across the rugged terrain. Several hundred cars spread out to the south of the plant, and he could see others speeding in from the temporary village across the ridge. Everything was quiet, orderly. He could see the shipments, crated, sitting in freight cars to the north. ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... sermon at Enfield in 1741, on "Sinners in the hands of an Angry God," was inspired to say to the impenitent: "The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked; His wrath toward you burns like fire; He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in His sight; you ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... a real expedition,—'cross country and back again. Jerry led us through the scratchy, overgrown part of Wecanicut, and we pretended that it was a long, weary trek through the most poisonous jungles to the coast of Peru; and when Greg walked right into a spider's web with a huge yellow spider gloating in the middle of it, he said he'd been bitten by a tarantula. We told him that we should have to leave him there to die, for we must press on to the sea, but ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... little more than keep alive the memory that such a source of supply was still in existence. I looked at the old Portfolio, and said to myself, "Too late! too late. This tarnished gold will never brighten, these battered covers will stand no more wear and tear; close them, and leave them to the spider and ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... advancing tide, nursery-maids in fast colors, boys in knickerbockers racing on the beach, people lying on the sand, resolute walkers, whose figures loomed tall in the evening light, doing their constitutional. People were passing to and fro on the long iron pier that spider-legged itself out into the sea; the two rooms midway were filled with sitters taking the evening breeze; and the large ball and music room at the end, with its spacious outside promenade-yes, there were dancers there, and the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... youngster, with your half fledged spider-legs," said the Captain, "but you'll not catch fourteen-stun-six goin' over that with its own free will. What's to ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... if it were made of a million dewdrops turned to diamonds and sprinkled over a lacy spider-web; the web swathing the tall and wandlike figure of Miss Billie Brookton in a way to show that she had all the delicate perfections of ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... followers, my friends are long since departed. But here, in these vaults which time has overlooked and which are as secret and as serviceable to-day as they were two hundred years ago, I wait patiently, with my trap set, like the spider for the fly!..." ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... ostler told me; and it seems he spent the evening watching him weave his spider's web. But the flies were over-wary. They knew whence he came; they knew the business for which he desired to enrol them—for a rumour had gone round that Condillac was in rebellion against the Queen's commands—and there were none so desperate ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... brother's fuzzy tail. This did not make Jan stop running, so Rollo was dragged after him through the heaps of snow, rolling over and over but clinging tightly until Jan turned and pounced upon him. They tumbled about, sometimes Jan was on top, sometimes Rollo, and they looked like a huge, yellow spider with eight sturdy, furry legs kicking wildly. At last, panting, they sprawled facing each other with pink tongues hanging from their open mouths and eyes ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker
... stood within a few yards of the clearing, in the middle of a thick group of cedars, we found Mrs. Tom alone with her elvish children, seated before the great fire that burned in the centre of the camp; she was busy boiling some bark in an iron spider. The little boys, in red flannel shirts which were their only covering, were tormenting a puppy, which seemed to take their pinching and pummelling in good part, for it neither attempted to bark nor to bite, but, like the ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... next space the Winecup and Spider, in connection with the sign of Mars, the characteristic of Mars being energy, show the strength, courage, and perseverance needed to carry out a successful career; the Spider being a symbol of concentration, patience, and ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... a very high phaeton on light wheels, rather like a great spider, its body represented by the little groom hanging on to the box and the two persons occupying the front seat, just missed a collision with the curb as it ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... notches on the loom, when one evening, as the expanded sun touched the horizon's rim, a ship's uppermost spars were observed, traced like a spider's web against its crimson disk. It looked like a far-off craft ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... candle-light flashed over the black marble statuette, grinning horribly as it kept guard over the Taj Mahal. Edna walked up to it, placed the candle on the slab that supported the tomb, and, stooping, scrutinized the lock. A spider had ensconced himself in the golden receptacle, and spun a fine web across the front of the temple, and Edna swept the airy drapery away, and tried to drive the little weaver from his den; but he shrank further and further, and finally she took the key from her pocket and put it ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... just talking what was in your mind, What was in all our minds, and you weren't hinting. Tell you a story of what happened once: I was up here in Salem at a man's Named Sanders with a gang of four or five Doing the haying. No one liked the boss. He was one of the kind sports call a spider, All wiry arms and legs that spread out wavy From a humped body nigh as big's a biscuit. But work! that man could work, especially If by so doing he could get more work Out of his hired help. I'm not denying He was hard on himself. I couldn't find That he ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... hair The painter plays the spider, and hath woven A golden mesh to entrap the hearts of men Faster than gnats in cobwebs; but her eyes— How could he see to do them? having made one, Methinks it should have power to steal both his, ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... country, with the sunset glory fading from it, lay like a panorama at their feet—shadowy woods melting into blue distance, streams glancing here and there into sight, fields rich with cultivation bounded by fences that looked like a spider's thread. To the left Claremont, seated above its terraces, made an imposing landmark. Behind it the moon was rising majestically in a cloudless sky. After they had been silent for some time, Clare turned and looked at his companion. "How beautiful you are!" he said abruptly. "I wish I had a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... commences. With a gallery built in this fashion, it would be possible to take several observations of the same transit, somewhat in the same way that the modern observer watches the transit of a star across each of five, seven, or nine parallel spider threads, in order to obtain a more correct time for the passage of the star across the middle thread, than if he ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... I In my just censure, in my true opinion!— Alack, for lesser knowledge!—How accurs'd In being so blest!—There may be in the cup A spider steep'd, and one may drink, depart, And yet partake no venom; for his knowledge Is not infected; but if one present The abhorr'd ingredient to his eye, make known How he hath drunk, he cracks his ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... now, Mr. Winthrop?" said Karen, looking round from her pan and moulding board. "These'll be in the spider before ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... go back and be the waiting spider forever in the yellow-brown studio, breaking your heart in the little room when some woman chooses to bring you news of men and the world? You would not descend to woman's purest prerogative?... Greater women than you shall come, and they shall avail themselves ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... potatoes, one onion, mix at once with two or three eggs (before potatoes have time to discolor). Have spider very hot with ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... SPIDER, a spinning mite, is a great pest in dry summers. It must be checked by the free use of the syringe or water engine as soon as seen. Yellow spots on the leaves are a proof of its presence. Mix 4 gallons of soft soap solution with 1/2 lb. of flowers of sulphur; ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum |
